


Permanent

by loserchic



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drug Use, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2015-03-26
Packaged: 2018-03-19 16:01:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3615840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loserchic/pseuds/loserchic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles has reached a fork in the road: Get clean or die. Derek has been there before and he knows the way back to life. A horror/love story.</p><p>Songfic for David Cook's Permanent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_68P6DNCkM</p><p>For everyone who thinks I'm a Derek-hater.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Permanent

Derek could be a child or a man. He’s not sure. He doesn’t know how to be a man. He doesn’t think he’s ever really been a child. The last five years have been a blur. His birth certificate says he was born twenty-four years ago but his body feels like it’s falling apart, cell by cell, buffered by living too fast and too hard. Living all at once. He wonders why there is anything left of his body, of him, at all. 

If his dreams are any indication, Derek’s mind is ancient. People say ‘old soul’ like it’s a good thing, but he feels like he has too many memories- and too few at the same time. When he closes his eyes there is nothing but a hazy watercolor of sharp emotions, heightened tension, a lot of sickness. Death. He can’t really remember any one specific fight with his mom, with Laura. They’d fought so often his entire life had become one long fight. Derek can’t remember a time when he was fighting for something. At the end it’d all been him fighting things off. 

He’s supposed to be at peace now, now that he’s not using. But Derek doesn’t feel clean. It doesn’t feel like he’s won his fight. 

Derek is outside in the parking lot of the rehab smoking a cigarette, trying to enjoy the simple things in life. Derek is trying to remember the simple things in life. He inhales, savoring the dry burn in his mouth. The throat hit. He breathes out a white trash cloud of fog and carcinogens into the world, feeling somehow satisfied at the sight of the pollution dissipating, poisonous and invisible in the spring air. Oh yeah. It’s spring now. The season of new life. 

This isn’t particularly new to Derek. He’d been picking up since he was eighteen. He’d been either high or in rehab the whole of his short adult life. And he was a late bloomer too, in this community. By the time Derek had started picking up he’d had enough of his brain developed to know exactly why he was killing himself slowly. But not enough to know how to stop. This is Derek’s fifth time in treatment.

A boy, tall and lean comes out of the building and sits on the curb. He’s wired and beautiful with a box-shaped lump in the front of his sweat pants. His body is all lean angles like a female model, and his hands shake, very slightly as he takes the pack out of his pocket and pulls out a cigarette. There isn’t an oz of fat on the kid. A junkie then- not an alcoholic. The kid is pale and has no muscle mass. There are scars on his hands and arms and one over his eyebrow. Street fighting, frat brawls, maybe just passed out and got stepped on a lot. It’s all the same and it doesn’t matter. 

He looks up at Derek and his eyes are enormous and fawn-colored. Beautiful like the rest of him. He’s young. Derek remembers being this kid a few treatment centers ago. He’s got the energy to pull through this, but he’s young enough that he probably won’t want to. Yes, Derek remembers being this kid. The body of a delinquent and all new, name brand clothes. The kid comes from money, a family. They all come from money here. The ones that don’t are either already dead or in some state run rehab. 

“Got a light?” 

Derek flips him a lighter, wordlessly still taking in the roughed-up beauty, and the kid lights up with a practiced hand. 

“Thanks, man.” The kid blows smoke slightly to the left and Derek leans down to take the lighter back and catches a drift of the kid’s second hand breath. Derek sits down next to the pretty delinquent, and he doesn’t know why, only that there’s been so little beauty in Derek’s life- he’s hungry for it. 

“Stiles,” the kid says around another plume, indicating himself. 

“Derek.” Derek answers, looking down at him. The kid cracks a smile. It’s charitable of him.

“You local?” Stiles asks. 

“California.” Derek says, shaking his head. 

“Me too!” The kid’s smile gets even bigger and Derek wishes he could go back home. He thought was over being homesick by now, but you’re never really too worldly to get over being any kind of sick. 

“What brought you out here, then?” Derek asks, stubbing out his butt and pulling out a fresh pack.

“My mom’s folks live out here.” Stiles says, his breath measured with is inhales. “Went to grade school out here. Moved back and forth a lot.” 

“Your folks still around here, then?” Derek asks. This was the type of conversation you had here. Honesty starts with the easy stuff in treatment. 

Stiles pauses. And then, “No. My dad’s company has a merger going on in silicone valley right now.” He stubs out his cigarette as well. “The Malone thing.”

Derek raises his eyebrow, but only slightly. “You’re dad’s with Deltoid?” One of the largest, hottest companies in the US right now. They’re in the middle of a contentious merger with an international company and it’s been all the business world and the twenty-four hour news networks can talk about. Derek might be a junkie but before he’d fried his brains, he’d been smart. He’d been an honors student with a full ride to college. He’d also hated himself more than he’d liked doing the right thing. 

“My dad’s the CEO.” Stiles says. The kid isn’t bragging. He doesn’t say it with any emotion at all. His large fawn eyes just look far away. Empty. “I was helping him with the merger right before I got sent here. I graduated from Berkeley last year with a degree in finance.” He laughs colorlessly, a short, sad bark of a thing. “Used to shoot up in his office. Crashed the Benz on Michigan Ave. during negotiations.”

“Damn.” Derek says, his voice relating neither admiration nor disdain, only acknowledgment. He’d been better at hiding his habit. He’d never shot up- too risky. He’d broken his mother’s heart just the same though. 

“What about you?” Stiles asks, and he turns to Derek with actual interest, his eyes a little lighter.

“I’m staying with my sister. Laura’s a lawyer here.” Derek says. “Doing outpatient. Again. My folks are doctors out in Beacon Hills. Dad’s a surgeon. Mom runs her own practice.” 

Stiles nods, solemn for a moment. He looks down, his pack is empty.

“You smoke menthol?” Derek asks, seeing this. 

“I never...” Stiles starts. Derek wordlessly hands the kid his own cigarette. Stiles takes an impressive drag on it, and Derek wonders if he can taste him on the end. 

Stiles looks up and nods, smiling. Derek pulls out a fresh one and lights it for himself, putting his nearly full pack between them. 

“You homesick?” He asks. For some reason he doesn’t want Stiles to be any more stressed than the kid probably is. He knows Stiles, for however young he may look to Derek, is old enough to know better, old enough to have to live with the consequences. Stiles probably deserves whatever mental anguish in going on in his head right now. But what’s done is done. And Derek doesn’t like the idea of the kid in pain.

“Nah.” Stiles says. “Just hate being here. I need to get clean. I want to get clean. But I feel caged up in the halfway house with all the...”

“Animals.” Derek snorts, knowingly. The worst part of being an addict is being condemned to live with other addicts. 

“Yeah.” Stiles laughs humorlessly again. “I need this though. I know I do.”

Derek looks out across the parking lot. “You’ll get it this time.” He says. “If you want to.” 

“I know.” Stiles says, not looking so sure for half a second but the kid is a consummate professional and has his business face on soon enough. 

Derek wants to tell Stiles he doesn’t have to front with him. That he doesn’t want the kid to talk to him the way he knows he talks to the therapists, to the counselors, and the doctors. The way the kid probably talks to his CEO dad. But Derek knows about being surrounded by people who expect perfection. Who don’t know strong kids with sharp minds can grow into scared adults with no direction. But Derek doesn’t say this. He just reaches out and puts his hand over Stiles’. He doesn’t realize how cold his own hand is until he feels how warm Stiles’ feels under him.

The kid looks up and smiles. It’s beautiful in Derek’s ugly world and he’s positive he doesn’t deserve it. 

* * *  
“There was this girl,” Stiles says. They’re sitting on the lawn of a park a few miles from Stiles’ halfway house. Derek had picked the kid up and now they’re sitting on Stiles’ red sweatshirt because they didn’t know where else to go. The halfway house is a zoo and Derek isn’t about to bring another druggie home, even a clean one, to Laura’s frigid eyes. “Redhead. I think it was a pity fuck.” He laughs, sounding a little less dull now. “Looking back, I pity both of us, anyways.” Stiles looks up at Derek with his huge eyes and the sun catches his ridiculously long lashes making them glint amber. Beautiful. Stiles shrugs. “Whatever. That’s how I lost my virginity. How’d you lose yours?”

The answer is vodka and DXM, but he doesn’t think that’s what Stiles means. Derek could say something smartass right now. He can be funny- when he wants. You don’t get through what he’s been through without having some kind of sense of humor, after all. But he looks at the kid and all of a sudden he doesn’t want to hide, not from him. He doesn’t want Stiles to have to hide with him either- he figures he owes the kid the same thing. That’s how he’s been told this works.

Derek looks out over the dry urban lawn, into the traffic beyond. “I don’t remember.” He says truthfully. “I don’t think it was... good.” He says this last part and it means something different than what Stiles had meant when he’d said his first time hadn’t been good. He glances down at Stiles and Derek knows somehow the kid gets it.

Stiles swallows, flicking at a lighter. “Yeah?” 

“Yeah...” Derek says. “I wasn’t like... young or anything. Not really. But I was, you know. I’d just started using.” Derek had told his friends when he’d lost his virginity, but nobody had even cared enough to ask how until now. It wasn’t exactly the kind of thing any self-respecting dude wanted to own up to anyways. “The guy was older.” He says because he knows he has nothing to offer Stiles other than the truth. “I didn’t know what I was doing.” A pause. “I didn’t tell him no.” 

Stiles hands over his lit cigarette wordlessly and Derek takes it, inhaling gratefully, the paper still damp from Stiles’ lips. The noxious cloud of their exhales envelops both of them and it feels a little bit like magic.

“I don’t really remember much of anyone after that first girl.” Stiles says. “I mean- I remember them. Just not all their names or like, what we did together exactly. I know we fucked, but I couldn’t like, give a deposition on it or anything. I don’t really remember what sober sex is like.” 

“I still get calls on my phone sometimes.” Derek takes a drag, quiet and steady. A small meditation. “People I’ve dated. I can never remember which year in college people are from. Sometimes I tell them that, because I’m so damn angry.” Another exhale. “Most of them don’t even know I was high the whole damn time we were together.” 

Stiles looks at him sharply, “How could they not know?” His eyes are huge and incredulous.

Derek looks away. “I don’t think anyone was paying attention.” He says. “It didn’t matter to them if I was really there or not.” He looks over to the kid, so brightly intense and interesting. Quirky. Funny. Endearing. The kid had clearly been a social user, not an isolationist like Derek. “I didn’t have like, a great personality before I started using, you know.” He adds.

“How would you know?” Stiles asks, a little fury in his eyes, and Derek can’t help but find the sight a little bit enchanting. “You probably don’t know yourself. I think you’re great.” 

Derek just looks at him, feeling something foreign, like a stupid smile on his lips and Stiles touches his shoulder.

“I should take you back before curfew,” Derek says, reluctantly standing up. He picks up Stiles’ sweatshirt only to have the kid drape it around Derek’s larger shoulders comically.

“You keep it until I see you again.” Stiles says, grinning. “You’re always so cold. Like a girl. Or a zombie.”

Derek swats at Stiles and the kid takes off running towards the car. Derek chases after him, clutching the kid’s dumb sweatshirt around Derek’s chilled arms. 

 

* * *  
The kid is twitchy. Impatient. And he eats like a horse, his stomach reconnecting with his brain after years of forgetting the feeling of hunger. Derek has taken to bringing Stiles burgers and curly fries every time he picks Stiles up now. The kid inhales them, making the most obnoxious noises and Derek laughs every time. 

They’re sitting in their park again, sharing a cigerette between them when Stiles throws down a packet of papers in disgust. Derek looks over, concerned. 

“What?” He asks. 

“Fucking homework for treatment, dude.” Stiles mutters, his voice thick. 

“Yeah?” Derek says, unsure of why something trivial like that would upset such a smart guy like Stiles.

“Fucking autobiography. My past use and shit.” Stiles says, his face still staring resolutely at his lap, turned away from Derek. 

“They make everyone do that.” Derek shrugs, taking a deep drag. “I’ve done that shit like three times. I should just save a copy on my laptop and add to it each time.” 

Stiles doesn’t laugh. “It was due last week.”

Derek reaches out. He knows the kid isn’t used to missing deadlines. Isn’t used to not being productive while sober. Before the drugs, the kid had be better than functional. The kid had to have been smarter than most sober people while high until the very end. Until it had gotten into his system so heavily it never left anymore. For the first time Derek looks down and thinks he finally gets how his mother’s felt all these years. 

“What’s the problem?” Derek swallows, trying to catch the kid’s eye. 

There’s silence and then the slightest, smallest hitch in Stiles’ voice. Derek realizes in horror the kid is crying. He’s not sure what makes him do it, or how Derek even knows how to do it, but he’s bundling Stiles into his arms before he can even think. And the kid clings to him, his face hot and damp against Derek’s t-shirt. Derek reaches around, stubs out his cigarette and holds Stiles tight with both arms. He buries his face in Stiles hair. 

“It’s going to be okay.” He murmurs, knowing the sight of helplessness and hopelessness when he sees it and hates that for Stiles. “Whatever it is, it’s going to be okay.”

“Fuck.” The word comes, muffled into Derek’s chest. “Fuck it.” Stiles comes up for air, laying his head against Derek’s chest. “I can’t think, Derek. I can’t fucking concentrate. I can’t fucking... do anything. I’m fucking clean, but I’m still fucking... useless. I used to be smart. And then... and now...” Stiles’ voice hiccups. “I can’t do anything.” His voice gets small. “What if I stay like this forever, Derek? What if I broke myself?” 

“You didn’t, Stiles.” Derek says, soothing his hands down Stiles’ back. “I promise you didn’t. This is just... how it is at first. It gets better. I promise.” 

“I don’t know how to be me anymore, Derek.” Stiles says. “I’m clean and I know I’m supposed to be like, fucking ecstatic and grateful to be alive and all that. I know I could’ve died like five times over with the amount of shit I was on, but this is... so hard. Sometimes I wish I did. I don’t want to live, not if I’m going to be like this. I don’t know how to live like this.” 

“Nobody does.” Derek says, leaning down to rest his forehead against Stiles’. “You don’t have to know everything, Stiles. You’re going to get through this because there are so many better things out there waiting for you. Because you’re amazing and you have something amazing you’re going to do. I know you are.” He closes his lips against Stiles’ forehead. “You just have to choose to keep going on. It’s you’re choice. I wish I could make it for you- but you have to choose to live, Stiles.” 

Stiles leans into him, his face wet. “Will you be here, Derek? I can’t... I don’t know if I can do this alone.” 

“I’ll always be with you, Stiles.” Derek promises. “As long as you need me.” 

Derek holds him for a long time after that. He stays there, sheltering Stiles until long after the sun goes down, his chin resting on the kid’s head, listening to the spring breeze and Stiles heart beating steadily, healthy and strong. 

 

* * *

Something is wrong with the kid when Derek goes to pick him up. Stiles is always nervous, always twitching, but this time he won’t let Derek out of his grasp. He holds on to Derek’s arm while they drive through the dim evening to the park, the kid’s slender fingers clutching against him. When they finally park and get to their usual place on the grass, Stiles climbs over into Derek’s lap almost immediately. Derek has found Stiles is affectionate when they’re alone together, the kid can’t seem to wait to touch him, to make sure he’s still there and Derek understands, but tonight there seems to be some kind of increased urgency behind Stiles’ trembling hands and gentle pressure. 

“Whoa,” Derek says, smiling down and encircling Stiles’ in his much broader arms. “What’s up tonight?” 

Stiles clutches Derek close and sighs, breathing into Derek’s neck. The kid’s whole body seems to be vibrating with nervous energy and so Derek holds him close until he settles. “What’s wrong?” He whispers. 

He feels Stiles swallow against him and then move back, a mere inch to say, “I finished treatment today.” Stiles’ bites that perfect pink lip. “My dad called. He wants me to go back to California. He wants me to come as soon as I can.”

Derek looks down at the kid, silent for a long moment, before crushing Stiles back into his chest and just holding him there. Derek’s shoulder feels wet again, and he’s pretty sure the kid is crying silently. Derek soothes his back, swallowing several times, trying to speak without letting his own emotions get in the way.

“That’s great.” He finally says. “You... you need to go back, Stiles.”

“What?” Stiles pushes away from him a little, his beautiful doe eyes wet and shocked. “What are you saying?”

“You need to go home, Stiles.” Derek says, gently. He reaches up to caress Stiles’ face with one large hand. His thumb soothes over Stiles’ eyebrow. He wants to remember that. 

“I don’t want to go!” Stiles says. “I thought you would understand.”

“You have things to do, Stiles.” Derek says, his tongue feeling heavy in his mouth. “You have so much ahead of you.”

Stiles is shaking again and the kid chokes out, “But Derek, I’m scared to go back. I told you- I don’t know how to live anymore. I don’t know if I can do it-“ 

“You can do it.” Derek says firmly, leaning forward to kiss Stiles’ forehead. “I know you can. You’re so strong. And I know you’re only going to get stronger. But you have to go home.”

Stiles collapses back into Derek’s chest. “How can you want me to go?” He says, his voice quiet and raw and it tears into Derek’s heart. “I thought you loved me.” Stiles looks up, his beautiful face is filling out more now. He’s starting to look healthy again. “I love you.”

Derek lets out a broken noise and presses himself closer to Stiles. “I love you too.” He says into Stiles’ ear. “I promise I do. I love you so much. And that’s why you have to go, Stiles. Because I know you’re going to do great things and have a wonderful life. But you have to choose to go home.” He kisses Stiles’ ear gently murmuring. “Please don’t ever think this means I don’t love you.” 

“I don’t understand.” Stiles sobs, and it’s as if he can feel Derek growing colder and more far away already. 

“Please Stiles,” Derek’s voice is quieter now. “You have to go now. It’s time.” 

“Derek!” Stiles cries. 

* * *  
“Stiles!” A voice calling softly back into his ear. A male voice that is familiar but not Derek’s. 

Stiles blinks awake. Everything is dim florescent lighting and there’s a stale linen and soap smell. He looks around, confused and disoriented. He’s lying in a hospital bed, a dip fixed to his arm. His body feels stiff and slightly sweaty. His dad is sitting by his bed looking at him with tears in his eyes. 

“Dad?” Stiles croaks weakly. 

“Hi buddy.” His dad says, taking his hand gently. “How are you?” 

“What...Where am I?” Stiles asks, his throat feeling like straw. 

“You’re at the hospital.” His dad says. “How much do you remember?”

“I...” Stiles looks around as quickly as his sore, weak neck will allow him. There’s no sign of the park or Derek anywhere. “I don’t know...”

“You OD-ed again.” His dad says, his voice broken. “You were out for almost two days.” 

“I...” Stiles doesn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry.” He settles on, before sinking weakly back into bed. He feels hot tears gathering in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Dad.” It’s just barely a whisper. “It’s not going to happen again.” He says, closing his eyes, thinking of Derek’s words to him. There is a deep ache, like something vital missing in him and he can’t stop his tears. “I’m done, Dad.” He says. “I’m ready to be clean.”

“We’ll talk about this when you’re feeling more awake, Stiles.” His dad says, leaning down to hug him. “You sleep now.” 

“I mean it,” Stiles murmurs, feeling some relief closing his eyes. “I love you, Dad.”

“I love you, Stiles.” His dad’s voice floats over him. 

Before Stiles drifts back to sleep, in the darkness he can hear Scott’s mom hovering somewhere nearby. 

“Thank god he woke up.” She says, also sounding like she’s been in tears. “I was so scared.” 

“I’m just happy you’re here, Melissa.” His dad says. “We’re so fortunate that you’re a nurse here. I only pray this is the last time. He said he was ready.” His dad chokes up a bit and Stiles wants to reassure him, but he’s too tired. “He told me he wants to be clean.” 

“We’ll get him strong enough to go back to treatment really soon.” Melissa says, through her tears. “He’s awake now. He’s going to get through this.” She sighs. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but I was so frightened for Stiles because the last boy we had in here actually was here on an overdose as well. It was one of our surgeons' sons- Dr. Hale’s son. He... he didn’t make it. I was so afraid Stiles would end up like Derek.”

* * *  
Four months later Stiles gets out of treatment. He’s been sober for 121 days. The first thing he does is drive to the Beacon Hills cemetery. He walks past the plots for a while before he finds one marked Derek Hale. Stiles sinks down in front of it and touches the headstone with his palm. Folded on the grass in front of him is his red hoodie.


End file.
